Rosa

Title: Rosa
Author: Nikki Giovanni
Illustrator: Bryan Collier
Publisher and date of Publication: Scholastic Inc., 2005
Genre: Biography, Picture Book
Age Range: 1st-5th grade
Awards: Caldecott Honor Book, Coretta Scott King Award

Summary: This is a different take on the Rosa Parks story. It starts with Rosa, working as a seamstress, sewing everyone's Christmas outfits. She leaves work and thinks about making her husband, Raymond, a meatloaf for supper, which is his favorite. She sits in the neutral section of the bus but the bus driver tries to make her get up for a white person to sit down and when she refuses, he calls the police. She gets arrested and the last part of the book talks about how that one statement made by Rosa Parks started a movement to stop segregation. Blacks start walking instead of riding the bus and the book ends by saying that it had been a year and blacks were still walking, to prove a point.

Response: I like this book, although I think it would be better for mid to upper elementary students because of the story. Younger elementary might not follow that this is Rosa Parks. I think that illustrations are wonderful. They look so life-like and dark to show the distress and frustration in Rosa's heart. I like the different point of view that this book shows, that most students have never heard before. I've heard the Rosa Parks story but never from her point of view. This lets you see how frustrating it was to be a black person and what they went through. This book would be good for children to hear to understand the story from something besides a history book.

Teaching Ideas: Scholastic.com has all kinds of lesson plans to use with the Rosa Parks story. Older children could pretend they are newspaper reporters and they have to report this story. How would they present the information? Younger students may just talk about what it must have been like to be Rosa Parks and what the world might be like if she didn't do what she did. Children could learn that you must stand up for what you believe. Children could talk about a time when they stood up for what they believed in.